


666-4242

by Transistance



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Trans Character, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Guilt, Musical Kuroshitsuji: -The Most Beautiful DEATH in The World- Sen no Tamashii to Ochita Shinigami, Present Tense, Reapers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:23:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4630293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Transistance/pseuds/Transistance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Eric Slingby is dead,” she informs him, as though the news is mundane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	666-4242

**Author's Note:**

> Feeling ill and full of writer's block. Motivation has flown and that'll likely prevent me from posting anything further for a while.
> 
> Sorry.

He knows that there is something amiss as soon as he opens the front door; the atmosphere of the house is wrong. Something is waiting for him, in the dark confines of his own home.

Sleep-deprived and angry – with himself, with his division, and most notably one Eric Slingby (a deserter, in this day and age?) - William T Spears is not in the mood to deal with anything delicately, or indeed non-lethally. It – and he still has no idea as to what _it_ is, exactly – has somehow managed to enter his home uninvited and clandestine, and it will pay the price.

He is half way up the hall, moving silently through the darkness, when he hears the singing.

It is very quiet, closer perhaps to muttering than anything particularly tuneful, and in equal parts relief and irritation he recognises the voice. _Good God, what on earth is she doing here?_

He banishes his scythe and continues on through the black entrance corridor, and he finds Grell exactly where he expects her, perched on the edge of the settee in the sitting room. One lamp is on, illuminating her in a circle of yellow, and her eyes are closed as she sings to herself under her breath. It is a strangely disquieting scene.

It gets worse when he gets closer and she doesn't move, but he can make out most of the words that hiss from her like acid.

“-Mother _fucker_ , stupid b _itch_ , you did this, you did this, cut them apart sure as whores, is it not funny how death and _death_ are two different things, you did _this_ -”

“I thought you were still out on field duty, Sutcliff?” The enquiry is not particularly harsh but her head jerks up all too fast anyway, obviously startled, and the words stop. There are hollows under her eyes, dark, looping things made deeper by the shadows cat by the lamp, but she has not been crying and although her makeup is old it is not off, so he takes those to both be good signs.

“... _Will_ ,” she breathes, breathless, and then frowns. “No, the field duty is... finished. No more. Done, done, _dead_ -” And then she breaks off and grins, terror in her wide green eyes. “So I came to see you!”

 _Evidently_. This seems the sort of moment that she would usually take to leap up and attempt to throw herself upon him, but to his relief she does no such thing. She just sits there, fingers gripping the edges of the couch, staring at him. “...How did you get into my house, Grell?”

He does not expect the question to set her off again. “Aa-ah, Will, a woman has her ways...” She wags one finger at him and for a moment seems normal before her face drops into guilt. “Although this way did involve a little less finesse than I would have liked – you've never given me a key, I couldn't pick the locks, but I needed to be here, needed to see you. I broke one of your windows, round the back; I'm sorry. Nothing that can't be fixed. I'm sorry. Needed you.”

She's babbling a bit, which is rare, and she has cost him property damage, which is _annoying._ “Could you not have caught me in my office?”

“Weren't there, you were not there, I had to come all the way out here because I couldn't be sure that you would come back there. Where were you?”

“I had a meeting. How long have you been here for?”

“What time is it?”

“Going on eight.”

“Three hours, then, give or take.” She blinked up at him, expression vague, and then said – singsong and sombre - “I'm afraid you'll have more overtime tonight.”

That was almost as ominous as his first impression of her presence had been, so William decides to stop beating about the bush and actually find out what is wrong. “What did you do?”

“What did I-?” She gasps as though his words have hurt her, and even though it is fake at first her hands are suddenly at her mouth, eyes blank and far away from him, and she glances at him once, fleetingly, before her gaze snaps down to the floor. “I _killed_ them. I killed them, I killed them, I-”

Oh, not again. “Who?” She couldn't have been killing humans again, could she? It would be the opportune time to do it, what with the attention of the Dispatch wholly focused on Slingby's own violent injustices, but she has _reformed_ since the Ripper incident. She'd sworn that she wouldn't start the meaningless killings again.

To his surprise – and relative disquiet, although he's not sure how much more of that can actually be piled on before it too becomes fathomless – her voice drops half an octave to something that would sit more at ease in the throat of a bored schoolboy than any manner of woman.

“Eric Slingby is dead,” she informs him, as though the news is mundane.

“I see,” he says, as though it is also not a surprise. “Good,” he adds shortly, and his tone is carefully devoid of any emotion or infliction; they have both been aware since Slingby revealed himself that if he was not put down by the teams searching for him he would only be dragged back to the council and executed there. All the same, it is still a shock; both that she could have defeated him and that he turned rogue in the first place.

“I suppose Alan took it badly?” The question is asked more because he cannot think of anything else to say, despite the comments swirling in his mind. They are both aware, also, that there is no way that Alan would not have taken it badly.

“Alan Humphries,” she says, in that same disinterested tone, “Is also dead.”

William stares at her, and then sits down.

“How?”

She cannot have taken them both on at once. Indeed, he is fairly certain that even Grell would have had trouble taking on Eric even one-on-one, buoyed up with souls and recklessness as he is. Was. Perhaps Alan had had an attack, and Eric had been distracted..? It isn't any particular surprise that Alan had sided with Eric over Grell, given their relationship, but it is still a disappointment. In spite of his illness the boy had been an excellent reaper.

“A death scythe to the heart will do in a reaper as well as anything,” Grell tells him, and her voice drops to something quiet. “I can't see any other way it could have gone.”

She is consumed by guilt, he can see; it is in her staring eyes, the way she hunches over as she sits there, motionless for once. And he can, to an extent, understand; she has taken the lives of two of their colleagues – hell, two of their _friends_. 

So, uncharacteristically moved by her own uncharacteristic despondency, he moves closer to her and puts his arm around her shoulders in an awkward farce of an attempt at condolence. She accepts the gesture without a word, leaning into him as though it's the most natural thing in the world, and he resists the itch to move away, out of her reach. She needs someone to lean on.

“Where are the bodies?”

This is something that he needs to know, because the corpse of Eric will be leaking souls as though there's no tomorrow (which for him, there isn't) and drawing demons from miles around. The stolen souls of the women he murdered must be collected as quickly as possible – Grell should not have waited three hours to report this.

And when she answers things get much worse before they get better.

“I don't know. He wouldn't tell me where he'd left them.”

“He-?” And suddenly William knows exactly what happened, and exactly why Grell is so distraught. “The demon killed them,” he states, and is filled with horror himself.

“I killed them,” she says softly, “As sure as if I put the scythe through them myself. I did this.”

“Michaelis did this,” stresses William, determined not to allow that monster to damage any more of his subordinates in any way. He doesn't mention that it is likely that the demon will have consumed the souls of both reapers and every single one of Eric's victims, because it goes without saying. He doesn't bring up the fact that Grell's behaviour over the course of the investigation has been appalling, and that the fact that she had willingly chosen to side with that _filth_ almost certainly had been the direct cause of both deaths.

It doesn't matter, because Grell knows that anyway.

“ _I_ did this,” she breathes again, breath hissing out. “They would never have chosen to lodge with the demon if I had not known him... He wouldn't have found them without my help; he needed a reaper and I played along like some pet of his, leashed up to hunt down my own kind... I didn't have to hand him the correct conclusion. I could have lead him on a thousand other merry dances that night, but I wanted to... God, Will, I wanted to impress him. I wanted to show him that I wasn't a liability, some flouncy thing, all frivolity and no function – and now Alan is dead. Eric is dead. Because of me.”

“Eric was going to die anyway,” William points out mechanically, managing not to show his shock at her words. “And you couldn't have known that he was the culprit for much longer than that demon – it is easy to make incorrect decisions on the spur of a moment.” He knows that he is being far too charitable, but in all honesty his own guilt is beginning to creep in now, summoned forth by the finality of the news. He should have prevented Eric from having any opportunity to go out and start the killings. The man had been acting off since they'd started, it had been obvious that something was wrong... Grell had been partially responsible for the means of the end, but William had been responsible for the end being necessary, and he knows it.

His belief changes a little as Grell looks up at him, sweeping eyes full of distress, and utters a confession that he doesn't expect.

“I'd known it was Eric since the moment the investigation was assigned to me.”

William goes very, very still.

“...What?”

“It was obvious,” she murmurs, eyes downcast again. “But I couldn't prove it – I had to wait for him to slip up. I had to catch him in the act, or at least with conclusive evidence.”

He stares at her, because she is suddenly both a stranger and more familiar than he can ever admit. He asks a question that he already knows the answer to.

“Why didn't you inform me of that at the time? We could have made all the inquiries internally; you wouldn't have had to get the demon involved at all.” Because that is why she enlisted Michaelis, he can see now – to help her take in Eric. Even if nobody knew it but her.

“I wanted to do it. I wanted to be the one to bring him in, Will; I wanted to do it without enlisting the _help_ of people who'd sooner spit on me than work with me. I wanted to prove to you that I'm not some useless thing, slacker, no good, pathetic little waste of time and space... Wanted to impress you. I _wanted_ to impress _you_!” And then she is scrabbling at his shirt front, fingers clutching yet finding no substance to hold in the soft white material, no understanding behind his blank eyes, no sympathy or empathy in his being. She tries to throw herself across him with a short, wounded cry, and he holds her back with one hand as her emotions get the better of her again.

“ _I did this!_ I was _selfish,_ I thought I could follow him and prevent him from killing them like you prevented him from killing me, I thought I had control of the situation and now they are _dead_ , they are both dead and I can't even tell you where he left their bodies and it's my fault, it's all my _fault!_ ”

Grell's wailing is accompanied by tears; thick, black things which run down her cheeks like slugs, clogged with mascara and dirt. William wishes that she could control herself, but after a moment (once he is certain that her grief is genuine, perhaps) he withdraws his hand from her chest and lets her bury her face in his neck and cry herself out.

It takes some time.

Eventually she comes to a hiccuping stop, breathing erratically, and then puts her arms around his shoulders and holds herself tight against him, motionless and voiceless. She remains there until he moves, easing out of her sorry embrace.

“The corpses have to be retrieved,” he informs her, although likely as not she's been aware of that particular necessity since she arrived. A team will have to be called up to comb the streets, the bodies and accompanying souls must be collected and returned to the dispatch and more likely than not everything will have to be investigated and filed as soon as possible. There is every possibility that the demon himself will have to be pulled in, if he's taken it upon himself to consume any of the lost souls. It will almost certainly take all night.

“You should stay here,” he adds, because she is in no fit state to be seen in public, and needs time to console herself. “Or you can go home. I will deal with this as quickly as possible.”

It is by no means he first time that he has dealt with her disasters, and will not be the last. He stands when he realizes that she is past the point of coherent words, and abandons her in favour of the darkness of the night.

* * *

He never sees her grieve for them again.

When he eventually arrives back home, some time past one, she is gone; leaving no sign that she had ever been but for the artificial illumination of the lamp and a sea of shattered glass in the back room. She does not turn up for work the next day, as the flood of paperwork produced in retaliation to the closure of case 666-4242 hits the department hard and forces every reaper present into unpaid overtime; she does not turn up the following day either, in which the formal interviews are held as a final façade of an investigation to determine whether Eric was working alone. She does not see William punch a dent into his office wall after the sallow clerk from personnel leaves the room, having informed him that the two losses of staff would not be replaced any time soon. 

She returns on the third day with a smile like the sun and is full of sharp laughter and her usual lecherous comments, prancing about the office and failing to do work.

If asked about the deaths of the reapers Eric Slingby and Alan Humphries, Grell will take the time to look surprised, then flash her teeth and give a distastefully vapid remark about life and death and love and loss. It is dramatized and unapologetic, loud and snide, and after a while William begins to wonder if there had been a woman in his house – all tears and regret – at all on that night.

Grell doesn't bring it up.


End file.
